The Clinton-Lieberman Connection, David Sirota blog

[caligirl]

http://action.credomobile.com/sirota/2008/03/the_clintonlieberman_connectio.html


March 5, 2008 10:33 AM
The Clinton-Lieberman Connection

"Confusion and misinformation are two of the most powerful weapons in a desperate politician's arsenal. They were used by Joe Lieberman in the 2006 general election against Ned Lamont, and exit polls suggest that they helped Hillary Clinton blast her way through yesterday's primary in Ohio.

Over the last few weeks, Clinton has been telling Ohio voters she never supported the North American Free Trade Agreement - an agreement that has become a symbol of corrupt economic policies to many working-class voters. Clinton has made these claims expecting everyone to forget her speeches over the last decade trumpeting NAFTA as a great success.

Her direct quotes praising NAFTA repeatedly are not up for interpretation - and neither are her absurd claims to "have been against NAFTA from the beginning." We're talking about pure, unadulterated lying here - and lying with a purpose: To confuse enough voters into thinking she actually did oppose NAFTA and that her strong support for NAFTA is somehow the same as Barack Obama's longtime opposition to the pact. Last night's results prove the scheme worked.

CBS News reports that "among Ohio voters who expressed that trade takes jobs away, 55 percent supported Clinton." The Associated Press has some more details:

"Clinton's past support of the North American Free Trade Agreement didn't hurt her in Ohio where most voters think trade with other countries has cost the state jobs. Blue-collar workers and voters who live in union households backed Clinton as did voters in northern Ohio where manufacturing job losses have been staggering the past decade, according to exit polls for The Associated Press and television networks. Clinton won nearly six in 10 votes from union households in Ohio's Democratic primary Tuesday and the same number among people who earn less than $50,000 a year."

If this all sounds familiar, that's because it is. Here's an excerpt of a 2006 article I wrote for In These Times about the Lieberman-Lamont race:

"As the Associated Press confirmed, Lieberman's margin was provided by a segment of voters who are strongly against the war, but who (wrongly) believed Lieberman is strongly against the war. Their misperception was no accident. Immediately after the primary, Lieberman unleashed an ad campaign to portray himself as anti-war, airing an ad where he says to the camera "I want to help end the war in Iraq."...Lieberman won the election not by defending the Iraq War, but by successfully convincing a key segment of voters that he was anti-war... internal polling showed that somewhere between 12 and 15 percent of the population said they simultaneously opposed the war and supported Lieberman's position on the war--a signal that Lieberman's confusion campaign was working."

Clinton was actually even more brazen than Lieberman. Not only did she lie about her record, she actually went on the offensive attacking Obama over the very trade deal she has long championed, "rais doubts about whether he was committed to reworking NAFTA," as the AP noted. To use the Lieberman-Lamont analogy, that's would be like Lieberman not only pretending to be against the war, but actually attacking Lamont for not opposing the war more strongly. Even Lieberman wasn't cravenly dishonest enough to do that - but Clinton was."

[LisaM]

1. Boy, he hates Hillary big time. I heard him on Thom Hartmann this morning

and was shocked to find out who was speaking.

[Kurovski]

5. What about lying about NAFTA?

Maybe you've confused disgust with hate?

What else did he say that indicated some form of "hate"?

[KaptBunnyPants]

8. They didn't read that part. As soon as they knew he wasn't praising Clinton, thier knee jerked.

[rinsd]

9. I've already expressed my displeasure at Sirota lying about Hillary's position on NAFTA downthread.

[here_is_to_hope]

2. *dupe*

[Capn Sunshine]

3. Truthteller!

watch the Hillarious ones talk trash about Sirota.

[rinsd]

4. David Sirota is lying

Her direct quotes praising NAFTA repeatedly are not up for interpretation

Yet not a single quote is cited here? Why is that?

Obama's mailer goes on to ask, "Is Hillary Clinton running away from her own record on trade deals that have cost Ohio nearly 50,000 jobs?" It then lists various quotes from Clinton on NAFTA, the most recent of which is a truncated version of the senator's remarks. The mailer quotes Clinton saying in Jan. 2004, "I think on balance NAFTA has been good for New York and America." As we said previously, the full context of those remarks, made in response to questions in a news teleconference, shows that Clinton advocated revisiting and renegotiating trade agreements. In that teleconference, she said she "always thought" that old trade agreements should be revisited and that environmental, health and labor standards should be added. "I think that we need a re-thinking of our trade policies," she said.

The Clinton campaign has sent out its own misleading mailer on NAFTA, trying to convince Ohio voters that Obama has praised the trade agreement in the past. Campaign rhetoric aside, the two candidates' positions on NAFTA are virtually the same.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/more_nafta_nonsense.html

Here's Hillary's tit for tata

Retaliation in Kind

We found the Obama mailer to be misleading in our Feb. 24 article. Here we judge that Clinton is retaliating in kind, with a somewhat misleading mailer of her own.

The mailer says, "Ohio needs to know the truth," and adds, "It's all on the Record." But it quotes the record selectively to misrepresent Obama's position.

The quotes come from two news accounts, one from The Associated Press and another from the Herald & Review of Decatur, Ill. What's not said is that they are both reporting on the same 2004 campaign event in Shirley, Ill., when Obama was running against Republican nominee Alan Keyes for the U.S. Senate. And both are quoted selectively, omitting Obama's criticisms of NAFTA.

[Kurovski]

6. Check it...

http://www.politicswest.com/20681/did_clinton_explicitly_support_nafta

According to NBC's Meet the Press, in 2004, Clinton said, "I think, on balance, NAFTA has been good for New York and America."

The Associated Press reported on 3/6/96 that she said, "NAFTA is proving its worth" and later praising NAFTA as "a free and fair trade agreement."

In her memoir, Clinton trumpeted her husband's "successes on the budget, the Brady bill and NAFTA."

In 1998, Bloomberg News reports that she praised corporations for mounting "a very effective business effort in the U.S. on behalf of NAFTA." Another direct quote.

In a 2002 speech to the Democratic Leadership Council, she said:



"We all know the record of the DLC, the Progressive Policy Institute and, of course, the Clinton-Gore Administration. The economic recovery plan stands first and foremost as a testament to both good ideas and political courage. National service. The Brady Bill. Family Leave. NAFTA. Investment in science and technology. New markets. Charter schools. The Earned Income Tax Credit. The welfare to work partnership. The COPS program. The SAFER program. All of these came out of some very fundamental ideas about what would work. The results speak for themselves. Those ideas were converted into policies programs that literally changed millions of lives and, I argue, changed America."

[rinsd]

7. Umm your 1st example was debunked in my post so Sirota is lying...again

"I think on balance NAFTA has been good for New York and America." As we said previously, the full context of those remarks, made in response to questions in a news teleconference, shows that Clinton advocated revisiting and renegotiating trade agreements. In that teleconference, she said she "always thought" that old trade agreements should be revisited and that environmental, health and labor standards should be added. "I think that we need a re-thinking of our trade policies," she

No a single link and a bunch of half quotes taken out of context.

David Sirota is a lying POS.

[Kurovski]

11. Then I guess we can call it Senator Clinton's "flattery" of NAFTA.

Flattery is a completely socially acceptable form of lying. Is that how we get around it?

Improving standards in OTHER countries is not the same as bringing jobs back to the U.S.. It's still a support of NAFTA.

[Samantha]

10. Bill Clinton became Joe Lieberman's protege when he came to

Washington. This was revealed during the Clinton impeachment debacle. Remember when Joe Lieberman came out and criticized Bill's behavior? The commentator said it was particularly stinging to Bill Clinton that Lieberman was the one dispatched to issue the verbal censor since he, Lieberman, had taken Bill under his wing and taught him the ropes upon his arrival in Washington.

That was precisely the reason the Dems chose Lieberman for the rebuke.

It's a little known fact among the public that the Liebermans and Clintons are to this day close and fast friends. Many wonder why Al Gore picked Lieberman to be his VP in 2000. The answer was because Bill Clinton had suggested Lieberman for the short list and said he would also be instrumental in winning Florida. After others were crossed off for various reasons, Lieberman was the last one to remain standing.

The Gores and the Liebermans are the friends the Liebermans and the Clintons are. The latter play the game similarly as this thread suggests. But there's a logical reason for that, as we now know.

[Scurrilous]

12. K & R

:thumbsup: